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New Study Finds That Online Streaming Services Are Slowly Starting To Pay Off

The Digital Age has complicated the way consumers compensate their favorite musicians. Album sales are down, but streaming services such as Spotify,Youtube and now TIDAL have become the primary methods for music fans to listen to their music. Five years ago, data website Information is Beautifulfound that a solo musician required 4,053,110 streams in order to pay the U.S. monthly minimum wage.

Five years later, Information is Beautiful has performed a follow-up study to see how streaming compensation has changed. The results are promising, with many streaming services paying artists more per song than they previously paid. Google Play ranks as the best streaming service for compensation, with artists only needing 172,206 plays to pay for the 2015 monthly minimum wage of $1,260. With Spotify, artists would need 1,117,021 plays to make that wage. Youtube trails as the least-rewarding service, with 4,200,000 plays needed for artists to make ends meet.